Bedroom Tax

vq "who decides the deserving and undeserving?" Exactly! And you are talking from bitter experience.

moved I think Frank is advocating no safety net. At least not one funded by him.

But I don't think anyone is smashing you all with the same bat! Why do you think that?

Vampire how long have you lived in your terraced house and when you were both working full time, did you not try to buy your own house?

So to get at those who somehow are undeserving we all get smashed with the same bat.

To me it matters not how many are the underserving poor, however many there are they should not be subsidised. In the same was as someone who breaks the law should be punished. If it is wrong it is wrong. If someone is capable of supporting themselves I think they should do so. If they are not, I think we should look after them. Simple.

So who decides what defines the deserving and undeserving poor.

We either look after people or we don't. I'm not someone who thinks that healthy people should be able to sit on the dole for years or live off benefits as a life choice but despite what the media and government would have us believe such people are in the minority.

I think with respect VQ that we really are not talking about you. I have said many times on various threads that there is only so much cake and that my preference is for more of it to go to the deserving and not to the undeserving. I cannot think of any posts where someone has suggested there should be no safety net for those who fall on hard times.

My rent is not OTT...£425 a month......there is very little cheaper and that is in no go areas of the city.

I live in a small, terraced two up two down with a backyard. Amongst other things I have agoraphobia so my home is my safe place and is important to maintaining my mental health. Our two children aged 4 and 7 come to stay every weekend and during the school holidays. They share the second bedroom. I receive ESA and DLA plus my DH works part time as a cleaner and earns £104 a week. He also saves the government money by acting as my unpaid carer.

The government say that we have too many bedrooms and that we should pay 25% of our council tax. This has increased our monthly expenditure by just under £150 a month. The benefit level was set assuming that housing benefit was received. As it's now been reduced that gives us £150 a month less to live on.

Up to last year both my OH and I were fully paid up members of society. We both worked full time and paid tax and national insurance and contributed to pensions schemes taking responsibilty for our old age. Now due to my illness I can't work at all and my OH has had to reduce his hours. Our world has been turned upside down and tbh we feel as if we're being punished. I'm sorry to all those taxpayers who are having to keep me but I thought that's what our caring society was supposed to be about. We worked hard and paid in to the system just in case something happened. Now it has, we are made to feel bad as if we are scroungers living off the 'hardworking taxpayer'.

And before anyone says 'we don't mean people like you' remember there are lots of people like me who have been affected by these changes.

nellie but it doesn't apply to pensioners!

So all you GN ers with elderly relatives! If you don't now have them, imagine some!

Supposing your 80+ parents are living in a two or three bedroom rented house on housing benefit in an area where they have lived since marrying. They know the neighbours and the area, have lots of support from old friends and a supportive child, lives nearby.

The only available one bedroom accomodation housing suitable for an elderly person likely to have increasing mobilty needs, that is available, is on the other side of the city on an isolated estate.

Added to this hundreds of other elderly social housing pensioners on housing benefit are also being asked to move to smaller accommodation of which there is not enough available. Should the housing benefit for your parents be reduced for as long as it takes to find them new accommodation. I suspect they might be terrible stressed about this.

Would you be happy with them moving to the other side of the city? Away from easy contact with you and their old friends.

You cannot afford to bale them out on this.

How would you feel your parents would react at being forceably relocated? Early death is a common factor when this is applied to care home residents.
In many circumstances this really is inhumane.

This is what this policy is likely to mean unless a bit more government sense prevails.

I make the point again that surely those in the most need should have the housing. Those who are in overcrowded accommodation must find it hard to be sympathetic to the complaints of those with space they don't actually need. Life is hard. There is only so much cake so it has to be sliced fairly.

See my previous post. Re the availibilty of smaller accomodation units.

This stupid idea will only affect those who are in rented property who need housing benefit, which means they are already on a low income.

Your abilty to choose where you live if you dont have money is non existent.

You will not usually be able to move out of that area as you will not have an entitlement in an area where you have not lived for sometime.
New social housing applicants already are restricted to a size of property suitable for their needs and the housing benefit is geared to this.

The problem is that those who will mostly be affected are those who have been living in a place for years. There is also a distinct lack of smaller, say, one bedroomed rented property in many areas.

To comply with the new benefit regulations poeple who are in a property where they have lived for years and brought up their children may have to consider moving out of their familiar area. This is known to have a devastating effect on their lives. what will suffer is peoples general health and the established social support networks available to them etc. This is very bad indeed for community cohesion.

I can see why social housing agencies want to encourage this and it's not a bad idea in principle but unless these smaller housing units are readily available in the localities where the people currently live it will cause many problems.
Another daft government idea which has been churned out as policy with no consideration at of the possible effects.

I have already made my point on bedroom tax and fully agree on Family Allow. being capped at 2 children. Some people seem to make a career of baby production at the expense of the taxpayer. After the war I could see the point, to encourage the replacement of the population lost during the conflict, but surely there is a limit to how many people we can fit into this pint pot of an island.

There was an interesting article in the Telewag today about this. One thing the writer said was that if you own a house and it becomes to large for your family and you can't afford it you downsize, as many of us do. Why do people feel they have a right to stay in a larger house, if they don't need it, without paying to do so. They have a choice - pay for the larger house like owners of large houses or downsize to affordable housing as owners of houses do. I don't get all thick stuff about having lived in that house for years. So have we, but we know that we will soon have to downsize for financial reasons so what is the difference?

I agree with the so called bedroom tax, why should people who are working and paying taxes pay for people on benefits who want an extra bedroom. The government is not forcing people to move just to contribute some money for the extra bedrooms. Perhaps exceptions should be made for disabled people and pensioners.

If you were working and paying your own rent you would rent somewhere you could afford not somewhere you could not afford.

Also I think benefits for over 2 children should be stopped, if people want a big family they should pay for them themselves.

It seems to me only people on benefits can afford to have as many children as they want because the state will pay for them, if there was a cap they might think twice.

I've just posted a chart on the Pictures thread which is very relevant to this discussion.

I pay rent in exchange for living in the property. I keep the property in good condition. I have tenants liability insurance in case I damage something but other than that my landlord pays for repairs....afterall it's his property and his capital.

The same goes for social housing. The social housing provider owns the housing stock.

Stansgran As a landlord I expect to pay for repairs in my properties unless damage was directly and deliberately caused by the tenant, so why shouldn't families in social housing expect the council to undertake repairs?

I worked from the age of 15 to last year when I became too ill. For all those years I paid tax and national insurance. My husband still works but only part time as I need looking after.

I live in a two up two down. I can't move because my condition would be very detrimentally affected. I am not making demands on my friends and neighbours nor expecting more than my fair share but I do claim the benefits that I'm entitled to.

Plenty of people move frequently. Think forces families. I don't know many people in social housing but those I do know always leave me stunned at their belief the Council should repair broken toilet seats or light fittings when I would go and repair such things myself. and I do know someone who lives on her own in a 2 bed roomed house and let's out the room(illegally I believe)while her son went to live with her husband and at sixteen made sure he got his own place. A family of three with three properties , five bedrooms between them and all expecting to buy the properties from the council .She is a friend but there are subjects I have to avoid when talking to her.

What can one say in the face of such comments? I give up.

Aspen please keep making that point, it is our money not the government's! This seems to be forgotten by a lot of people (I don't mean on this forum) and if the people living on welfare and makeing demands were to understand that it was their friends and neighbours who were paying for them, some of them might see it differently. I have seen far too many on the television and heard on the radio who seem to think that because they want something they should have it. I know not all claimants are like that but some of them really are.

Off subject but today we saw a couple of volunteers collecting rubbish from the grass, surely this is something the unemployed could do?

i dont agree with the bedroom tax

slightly off topic .....lots of families seem to think each child should have their own room now
i shared a room with my brother and sister for years when i was young